Help Wanted! Or, how do I know if I’m called to youth ministry? Calling is a strange concept, and men and women far wiser than I have tried to tackle to subject. And the methods we see in scripture used to call men and women to Kingdom action often make our efforts to figure it out even tougher!…
To truly make the most of your lesson time in youth ministry, we suggest you develop some “staples” that you lean into as you prepare each week. The Staple of Truth. God’s word is chock-full of life-changing truth! It’s sharper than any two-edged sword!…
Christmas has always been one of my favorite youth ministry seasons. There’s no end to the creative possibilities! If you’re searching for Christmas game and event ideas, here are some of my all-time favorites: 1. Reindeer Games—Set aside an entire night for Christmas game fun!…
Because Thanksgiving lands on November 24 this year, [tweet_dis]here’s a list of 24 things to be thankful for this season[/tweet_dis]: 1. Pizza—Pizza is to youth ministry as turkey is to Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t be complete without it! 2. Senior Pastors—They paved the way and led the charge.…
This is my first year in youth ministry… I just jumped into a new youth ministry role… What should I do first? Three Checkpoints for Your First Year in Youth Ministry Your first year may be the most important year in a new ministry setting.…
My wife, Rachel, doesn’t like to give me a Christmas list. (I’m sitting in Starbucks drinking some sort of holiday themed drink, which serves to remind me that Christmas is just around the corner!) Instead, around this time each year, she expects me to be listening to her cues and “reading between the lines” to decipher things she’d like under the tree.…
When I was asked to write a little post encouraging my youth worker friends to maximize their day off, I became a little anxious. Mostly because I don’t like reading stuff from people telling me how to live my life, so why in the heck would I want to become a culprit myself? …
What’s the feel of your youth ministry? Why does our ministry exist? If you’ve never asked yourself that question, you should. Knowing why you exist as a ministry will help you draft a mission/purpose statement that can guide most of your leadership decisions.…
Anchors & Sails A constant struggle for many youth workers is trying to determine what lessons/topics to teach, and when. And unless you use a pre-produced curriculum that has a well thought out and ordered scope and sequence my hunch is you struggle, too.…
Hillary was right. It takes a village. Kara Powell and the research she has helped lead at the Fuller Youth Institute has confirmed in recent years that one of the primary factors in limiting the risk of faith abandonment (or as I like to call it, “faith fade” since very few people intentionally abandon their faith) is the presence of about five caring, Christ-following adults involved in the life of a teenager; a Christian village might be another way of saying it.…
